Oh hey, I think it’s the comic’s two-year anniversary

I’ll celebrate by having one of those weekends where you feel too generally apathetic and burnt out to get out of bed and put the comic up late.

Anyway, yeah, when I was younger my dad used to have this running dare with his grade 12 students that if more than half of the Grads dyed their hair an unnatural colour, he would shave his beard off (which he’d had since he was about 17). When I was twelve, they finally took him up on it. I remember he wanted me to take a photo of him so he could send it back to his family in Ontario, and I couldn’t even hold the camera straight because every time I looked at him I started tearing up. If having your dad de-bearded is that traumatic for a middle-schooler, I can’t even imagine what kind of mental scars a toddler would get from seeing their dad mysteriously bishified.

OH! And I was on the Webcast Beacon Newscast this week talking about the fallout from the Friedrich Ghost Rider case and the like, if anyone is interested in that sort of thing!

I was in a similar position to Commanders kids as I was the child of divorees except I got sent by plane once or twice a year and I remember the one year he shaved I couldn’t recognize him when I got off the plane last and I started crying at the terminal before he could rush forward and then I cried even more! XD I scared the shit out of the airport staff.

I had the same problem @ 5 as well. My dad shaved his beard and I walked in on him just as he was finishing, I started crying hysterically … I didn’t know what was happening, or who the hell that person was. I didn’t let him touch me or even get near me until my mom told me who he was, and even then I wasn’t convinced!

I assume B. is for Badass… but perhaps the Commander has another name he’s hiding from the guys.
That or it’s just a censor to keep the kids from hearing Badass every time their dad comes up in a conversation.
I’m going with embarrassing secret real name through.

I assume B. is for Badass… but perhaps the Commander has another name he’s hiding from the guys.
That or it’s just a censor to keep the kids from hearing Badass every time their dad comes up in a conversation.
I’m going with embarrassing secret real name through.

I completely understand the trauma. When I was a toddler my father decided to completely shave off an Afro he had been growing since before I was born. I walked into the room as my mother sheered off a huge chunk from the back of his head. My less than two year old brain thought that his head was naturally shaped like that and decided that Mom was taking off chunks of his head. I spent the better part of the next hour running from my zombie dad (who was trying to calm me down) and screaming in sheer terror.

Similar story from one of my friends. When he was about 5/6 he had a nightmare that woke him up so he crawled into bed with Mum and Dad (who were already asleep) for comfort. Woke both of them up screaming and crying because “Who’s this strange man Mummy? What have you done with Daddy?!”. He’d never seen his Dad without a beard before and his Dad had shaved it off that night after kiddo had gone to bed…

Yes, the virus must die. You do not mess with someones family. It’s now personal. On a side note, i must say commanders ex wife is a very … nice looking lady. I’d expound more but he’d come after me in whatever time i am.
I also find it cute that his daughter is missing a tooth just like he is when he is in his normal un-infected state.

I remember when my dad first did that in elementary school and came to pick me up. I saw the car, ran over and then stopped dead in my tracks when I didn’t recognize who was driving it. I wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed for getting my dad mixed up with someone else’s or what. It was an extremely confusing and hesistant moment. :p

I just thought of something… What does bishification do to someone’s voice? Does he still sound like himself? Or does he sound like he’s taken a few estrogen shots and a kick to the nuts like a lot of bishonen?

I’m a mom…I think Maddy is a wonderful person for remaining calm. If I was leaving my children with a family member and showed up to find him or her in the grips of…oh…say the flu or a really bad case of mange, I don’t know that I would have been so calm. Who besides Coelasquid can say that this ‘virus’ is only contagious to adult men?

And of course he was just sitting there, having not sent a text or called.

Poor kids. They are going to have issues over this one. Although maybe it is a missed opportunity, there, to teach the kids to not judge a book by its cover, lol.

I will agree with you, especially the shocked aspect of it. I think he really needed to talk to Sarah, make sure that she still accepted him. Probably just sitting outside waiting for the kids to arrive but needing to talk and wasn’t mentally projecting how his children would react. But from the wealth of stories coming into this comments list, pretty much people remember a negative experience with fathers just shaving. Maddy and the kids reacted very appropriately.

He could even be sitting out there because it’s part of his routine and he’s doing it automatically, and he’s not even thinking about his family coming to visit. If he was thinking about it, he probably would have put a full-body bag over his head.

Agreed on Maddy being very admirably calm. I chalk it up to the fact that from what little we saw of their married life, she had to deal with random fires, bare-chested death matches, etc., so now stuff like forgetting to call just rolls off her back. XD

Is it really?? Cool beans. I’m just getting familiar with some of the terms like bishi and bishonen. (Oh, and deviantarts…what? )

Read the entire archives twice before I even came down into the comments sections to find the community. I’m new to this comic and it’s totally caught up my interest; I care about what happens to these people.

My dad did the exact same thing! My dad has had a beard my entire life, and once when we were kids he shaved it and i was terrified of who this strange man was.
I distinctly recall hiding behind my mother at the clothesline, scared at who this man was in our house.

Also, i am the big bearded guy you hugged outside of the Dragon Palace in Perth after the dinner! I have been meaning to comment since then. I will understand if you do not recall me. I am sure you met a lot of people.

I had an ex whose dad has had a mustache since forever. One time, when she was young, he shaved it off, and she ran around the house, terrified at the stranger who came home from work, screaming “WHERE’S MY DADDY!?” Funny stuff.

I’m kinda surprised they left the building at all. Wouldn’t they want this to be as contained as possible? Or would it not be so much of a threat to the normal population that the worst it could do is cause any man to loose their facial hair?

Then again, they are MEN, and I doubt they would let themselves be put in a position to be taken care of. Still, I kinda wish they had some sort of emergency system but I guess all that planing went into zombie planing.

My Dad is retired Air Force. We were living overseas when I was young (toddler age), and they did a lot of war exercises on that particular base. Part of the exercise is dressing up in your chem gear, which is essentially a funny smelling onesy with a gas mask. My Mom was out with me when we came across everyone in their chem gear marching from one place to another. My Dad happened to be there and (things being less uptight back then) stopped by to say hello.

Apparently I was terrified of him. I guess I spent their entire conversation crying.

So yes, if some strange looking dude came up to me as a 2 yr old claiming to be my Dad, I’d probably have cried too. Dads are suppose to look one way, not randomly change their appearance! xD

When I was really little, around 6 or so, my dad had a mustache. One day he called me into the room, told me to hold out my hands. I did so and he whipped out an electric trimmer and shaved it all off in one shot so that it dropped right into my hands. Apparently I freaked the hell out and started screaming for him to “PUT IT BACK! PUT IT BACK!”

I don’t actually remember any of this myself, so presumably I either blocked the memory or just plain forgot about it. (Or it’s possible it never happened and he’s just messing with me, but I doubt that.)

She turns into a magical girl of course! Huge eyes, big poofy skirt, and bizarre hair style with a wand or some other sort of magical looking device. Actually, I think I want to see that now. It would be hilarious!

Or since the Commander was bishified, went from total beefcake to bean pole, it might do the opposite to Jonesey when it comes up to making everything animu. She might turn into well endowed muscle girl like Tifa from FFVII. O_O the world would be doomed as we know it.

She’d probably become a fan service anime girl. Huge rack, curvy body, huge eyes, crazy long shiny hair, and a short enough skirt that gives a permanet panty shot along with a top that barely conceals (if it even contains) her new assets.

I’m not saying there is, I’m just saying that’s a possibility ^.^;;; This is coming from an Anime Fan who loves a ridiculous amounts of violence in her anime, which usually involves lots of fan service as well. For cryin’ out loud I love High School of the Dead and Rosario Vampire so… yeah, guilty! <3

When I was little, my Dad, who’d ALWAYS had a mustache, shaved it off for one Halloween. The facepaint for the Vampire costume didn’t go over the mustache, so off it came. I FLIPPED. Screaming, crying, running away from him. Took Mom a while to calm me down, and took me a while to accept that it was my Dad and not someone else. He hasn’t shaved it off since.

I am oddly proud of the commenters being like “THE VIRUS MESSED WITH HIS KIDS. THERE IS HELL TO PAY FOR THAT.”
I was thinking “If I were a kid, those stupid glasses magicked onto his head would be scaring me”, but I like how everyone else is so protective of his kids.

I find it interesting that Jonesy is more nonchalant about all this than Maddy. I’d think that the ex-wife would be more used to all the crazy inexplicable stuff surrounding Commander instead of Jonesy, who’s relatively new, yet taking it all perfectly in stride.

I also couldn’t help but laugh at the kids desperately clinging to Maddy like “OH GOD, KEEP IT AWAY!!” I know how you feel, kids. 8C

Keep in mind that this is Maddy’s first exposure to the changed Commander and that we didn’t see how Jonesy reacted when she first saw it. Also, her ex-husband has undergone a serious physical alteration and her children are freaking out, that’s going to affect her at least a little.

When I was three or four my dad got a job where he had to be clean shaven for safety reasons. At this time I’d never seen him without a beard. When he came out of the bathroom I took one look at him and ran away screaming. Dad hollered for me to come back and i recognized his voice. i stood at the end of the hall for a minute then asked, “what the hell happened to you?” i honestly don’t remember any of this but it one of my Dads favorite stories.

That’s the fun of it, Eve, we don’t know what this story arc may hold and maybe it does affect women. But what happens? And we’ve sorta glommed onto the idea that it is a virus or other germ-spread thing (thanks to the Commander’s statement only (I think…)) but what if it is some aspect of one of the games come through? Like Mr. Fishy’s transformation happened in this real world of the Commander and Jonesy, why can’t Nier’s split personality leak out as well?

Something similar happened with my dad and his beard too! He had been sporting a beard ever since I was born, and when I turned 7 he shaved it off. My dad did it in pieces over a few days so I wouldn’t get confused and be unable to recognize him though, so I wasn’t traumatized or anything. :]

I had a moment like that with my father. I was 4-years-old and he shaved off his 80s beard… I woke up early in the morning to use the bathroom and a stranger was standing in my house. I freaked out so bad I woke the neighbors.

My Mom cut off all her hair when I was ten, I remember getting home from school, opening the door and freezing, terrified, because a strange lady stole my mom’s voice – which was, apparently, the only way my mind could reconcile the hair and the voice.

I think I read something about someone’s dad coming home from deployment with the maximum mustache the military would allow. Same thing here – I was older, and dad had said they’d just had “Mustache Month” in his unit, but the sight of him was so incredibly surreal that I had to do a double-take every time I saw him until he shaved it off.

You’re right, we don’t. I guess I’m assuming that if Nier showed up at one end of a room and started swinging those nails, by the time he got to the other end, these fighter-types would have remembered they are fighters and got him. And he’s not in any of these panels on the last two strips. But the Commander specifically warned Jared about touching his open wounds so maybe there was righteous blood-splattering at some point. Like not seeing Jonesy’s reaction to the new Badass, we don’t get to see it.

The only time I’ve seen my father with (nearly) no moustache and goatee is when he had chemo/radiation for cancer. The cancer’s gone and the hair has since grown back, but it was pretty scary to see what all it was doing to him. He wouldn’t shave that moustache off for the world.

She’s not there to see him, she’s there to drop off her kids with their dad and go. Said kids are reacting with very obvious trauma – I think it’s a good call on her part not to leave them there.

Admittedly, Jonesy seems to be rolling with it a lot more smoothly, but I’m not going to hold it against his ex, who didn’t come to hang out with him (as for the expression, we don’t know what Jonsey’s face was like when she first saw him either)

Explanations don’t really matter. An explanation isn’t going to calm down the kids and that’s all that matters in that situation. Finding out he was infected by some crazy bishifying disease isn’t going to do anything but make things worse.

Actually, when I was two, my dad sat me on the bathroom counter and proceeded to, with me looking on, shave off his magnificent man-beard. Keep in mind I was watching the entire process. When he finished, he smiled and looked at me as if to say ‘How’s that?’

I started screaming my head off and threw myself off the bathroom counter in an attempt to get away from him. It took me two days to accept him as my father again, according to my mom.

I guess a few have already mentioned similar stories. My father shaved his beard when I was like, four. My brother was five, and my sister was six. It’s before my memory, but according to my family elders we all treated him like he was a stranger and simply ignored/avoided him. I don’t remember hearing if they had to fight to convince us it was him. Probably none of us asked, confident in our assessment of strangerhood.

My father was a missionary so it was common for him to be gone prolonged periods, and for strangers (converts) to be around. We probably assumed it was just one of those times. Personally, that may have simply been a harbinger of things to come. Sometimes even just wearing new clothes with throw me off. I also recognize people driving by from the colour of their car and not the model. My mind just isn’t built for the right kinds of associations.

Never had anyone close who had facial hair all the time, but I do understand why loss of facial hair would make such a difference, even just a little. One of my teachers had stubble all the time until one day, he came in absolutely clean shaven. I knew something was different, but it took me a minute to identify it. He looked slightly younger, but kinda freaky looking in my mind. He said he only does it once a year and the stubble will be back within five days.

When I was a wee toddler, my dad shaved off his beard. I cried every time I saw him. He had to hold me on his lap, facing away, and talk to me quietly until I stopped – but the second I saw his beardless face I’d bawl again. Sadly, he didn’t learn his lesson, and recently shaved the beard again. There may have been some sobbing when I saw him. Maybe. A little.

It was the oppisite for me, my dad always shaved regularly as mum said he looked like a bad version of survivour man if he didn’t. Anyway, he use to work away at the mines for months at a time and one time he came to pick us up from school as a suprise. I get to the car and Dom from gears of war three is waving and as far as my child brain can tell smileing at me. Took forever to get my hysterical sister in the car. We then spent the whole drive home staring at this six-foot beared stranger. He shaved it off not long after that.

I know that feel, ‘squid.
My old man rocked a beard my whole life to age 9, when he had to shave it off so he could use proper safety equipment at work. When he arrived home without it at the airport for the first time, my sister (12 at the time) began to cry, remarking “YOU AREN’T MY DAD!” over and over. I just stood there in total shock.

My dad shaved for the first time when I was six. He walked out into the living room while my little brother and I were watching Saturday morning cartoons, thinking to surprise us. We practically howled the house down because we thought someone had broken in.

It just looked wrong. So, yeah. I know what you mean, Coela. You have my sympathies.

Weird what sort of scars we take away from childhood that no one would ever expect.

BUWAHA! That’s PERFECT. Beast was so much more interesting as a burly hairy creature; I didn’t quite make the human transformation = bishification connection though. If I were Belle, I’d be demanding my nice Beast back, not this weenie stranger. Matches what’s just happened to the poor Commander.

I’d forgotten about this retelling…thanks for the reminder, Lissa. Good thing I work in a library and can easily get a copy; I own a lot of her work but this one wasn’t on the shelf. McKinley wrote several retellings of this story, I think I may have to reread them all.

I have to say that this was one of those comics I laughed at, but knew of the trauma B’s going through. Also, strange coincidence that he’s called B. I have a character in a sci-fi romp I’m working on called B.

She’s an explosives expert, wiry and all. BUT, I have to say that if my father got bishified one day I’d probably cry too. Awesome strip!

considering I distinctly recall the one time my dad shaved off his beard when I was three and my mom and I BOTH cried about it, I know your pain.

Of course nowadays he does all kinds of crazy shit with it [I dunno if he still does it now, but he was shaving his head completely skin-bald and wearing a mustache like the Vikings logo on their football helmets]. And it’s pretty cool. I keep telling him to grow a Sam Elliot mustache but he doesn’t :(

My father had a beard when I was growing up. It really added some character to his face, and the history of that beard is pretty amazing. There was one time he grew it out in protest of…something…and we called it his “Achmed” beard (we’re Jewish so it’s funny). I only ever saw pictures of him beardless, from when I was an infant.

I came back for Spring Break my freshman year of college, and my father walked into my room to say hello – beardless. It took me a few looks to even recognize him, and then that entire week to get over it.

Look at this. See this? A father, a mother, a daughter, a little boy. THESE are the people that are hurt by this disease! We hear the politicians say “There’s no need for funding to solve a harmless cosmetic defect,” but they just don’t understand. Everyday, families… LIVES are torn apart because of the Bishie Virus.

Don’t let this tragedy continue. Please, donate. For just pennies a day, you can help us find a vaccine, and perhaps even a cure for this debilitating disease. The family you save… just might be your own.

Of all comics this is the one that causes me to make a post. I can attest that yes, for some kids, it’s a horrible thing to see ones dad without a beard if he’s had it for a while. While it never bothered me as far back as I can remember, my middle sister apparently use to cry her eyes out when she was under three after dad shaved because she didn’t know where her daddy was and who the strange man is. My nephews and niece use to go silent and just stare at him till the oldest turned 9. Since it didn’t bother him anymore the others, who was 8 and 5 at the time, stopped being freaked out as well.

One time, when my brother had gone to summer camp for the week, my dad decided to shave the mustache he had had since I was around 2 (He shaved it when I was born so I wouldn’t grab hairs or something) And the first words out of my brother’s mouth when we came to pick him up, after “Hi dad”, were “Grow it back.” It was weird for me too, but less so because I saw the thing happen instantaneously.

Ahah something similar happened to me with my moms hair when I was 6, she’d had it like ass-long for all my life and showed up one day with a very very short cut, I totally hated it at first because that wasn’t what my mom looked like to me

Reminds me of one time when I was two or three years old, my mother came to pick me up from day care and she had gotten a haircut during the day.
Normally her hair was long, but she decided she wanted to cut it super short.
Anyway, when she showed up, I didn’t believe she was my mother, and started crying and screaming when they forced me to go home with her. It was actually pretty traumatic.

Serious question here. Does the transformation make his voice sound different? It seems like it should sound different as his chest, neck, mouth, and skull have all visibly change, and of those things effect the sound of a person’s voice. I could buy that it is not changed due to the same magic that made his cloths change along with him. Either way I would like to know from the author which is the case. Thank you.

The speech bubbles tell us is manner of speaking hasn’t changed, his grammar and syntax are unchanged. Still not sure about the actual sound of the voice. Hoping the author could set me straight on this.

Bishies are usually portrayed with a mezzo-soprano or a contralto facher voice. These are what we in the west would classify as a deeper feminine sound. My guess is that the Commander moved to a smooth middle C from a more baritone voice with possibly a touch of gravel from the smoking.

My dad’s had a beard my entire life. He had it before I was born, and we figured he’d always have it. Then he started his most recent round of chemo. If it wasn’t for his bright Hawaiian shirts, we wouldn’t be able to recognize him. He’s really starting to look his age… (71)

When I was younger, my dad and his brother (my uncle) used to look somewhat alike. My dad always had a moustache, and then my uncle decided to grow one. From a distance they looked exactly alike, so imagine my embarassment at a football game when I ran up to my uncle going, “DAD, HEY DAD, DAAAAAAD!” and getting upset because he wouldn’t answer me. Then my dad turned me around and said, “What do you want?” I was like WTF???

I know that when I was about 10, my dad decided to shave off his mighty mustache that he had had since college. He decided that day to pick us up from school, too (which he rarely did because of work), and my twin brother outright refused to get in the truck with him for the longest time until we were sure it was dad. lol

Not entirely tied to facial hair or children! I’ve had a habit of just letting my hair grow until I get tired of it, and then (generally) getting it shorn short. One year ago (or just about), I was shaving off my sideburns and buzzed a bit high on the right side.

After about four seconds of contemplation, I uttered a noncommittal “fuggit” and proceeded to shave my head completely, for the first time in my 23 years of life.

I walked into the kitchen after that and my mother screamed. She said she thought someone else had entered the house.

I can’t say that I remember a story where my dad shaved his beard and I no longer recognized him, although he did shave his beard a couple of times when I was a kid. I did have a job interview recently though, so I shaved my beard and had a nice suit on, and when I went to visit my mom afterwards to see if she wanted to grab lunch with me, she didn’t recognize me at first. Once she caught on she had to parade me around her preschool and show me off to all of her teachers/friends…

I too have a traumatizing loss-of-dad’s-beard story. Apparently my dad was in the habit of shaving off his beard in the summer, so he shaved it when I was about two or three and it was the first time I knew enough to tell the difference. I apparently screamed when I saw him and wouldn’t go near him until it started to come back enough that it was recognizable again. I don’t think he shaved it off again until I was in elementary school and it started to go grey.

Oh wow, this page REALLY shows a lot behind the Commander’s love for his kids. I feel all kids of bad for him now, and no longer just because he’s stuck as a girly-man. I’m actually getting anxious to see how this will play out.

Doesn’t she already know that B stands for Badass?
I mean, when Jared was delivering the mail and asked about why they were addressed to Commander Badass, she was sitting there. I believe that was…http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/316

NOOO!!! What have you done!!!??? dont you know that the rules of anime state that if a young pretty boy with any amount of angst is the center of the story then the story wil be over with twice as fast compared to, lets say angst-less commander (whether bishi or non-bishi). you’ve cut this story in half. I wanna see more…

Actually, after we had our son, my husband had a period of wearing red a lot, so now, he can’t pick up the kid in anything but red, and ESPECIALLY not green, or the little one starts screaming “DU IK MIN DADA” (In english, you’re not my father)

Know what’s worst, he exposed his son to his sickness.
So he might end up being infected at a young age and have serious growth defects once he hits puberty.
The lack of testosterone combating the what ever runs through Bish/DA victims means he might end up worst than his father is.
you think he would be seeing his son in a bubble.

I remember when my father shaved his beard off when I was 5, and my sister was 3. That was the worst thing that had ever happened in our short lives. We just cried and told him to put it back on.
He must have been traumatised by the event as well, cause it’s 20 years later and he hasn’t shaved it off since. I don’t know how I would react if he decided to shave it off tomorrow.

Oh god. I just remembered one time when I was 6, my dad came to pick me up and I thought he was a stranger because he’d gotten rid of his mustache. He had that thing since I was born and he looked like an entirely different person without it.

When I was in fist grade, my father shaved for the first time since before I was born. I didn’t know about it until he came upstairs to tuck me in and I nearly screamed from absolute fear because some baby-faced bald man was suddenly in my room kissing me goodnight. I never before knew true terror.